10.2 upgrade freeze on boot

Hi,

I've been using Mandrake 10.1 for a while now, but went for the 10.2 update and broke my machine. The install went through without any problems at all. The machine is an IBM desktop, but there's nothing unusual about it.

Three symptoms

1) If I boot into the default Linux, it gets as far as "Detected IBM BIOS, enabling APM" and then freezes dead. Not even a caps-lock light will respond, and I have to power off/on. I've added noapm to the end of the boot string, but to no avail.

2) If I boot into linux-failsafe, it goes fine until it hits the "Loading ALSA" stage, at which point it again freezes dead.

3) If I boot into the old kernel, it finishes the boot, and gets to the command line, but the network won't work (some scio error) and X can't find any screens. But the data is all ok, and the command line seems to be working ok.

I've tried every command line I know of - noapm, nousb, ide-nodma etc, unplugged all the peripherals, and so on, but it just hangs at the same point, every time.

Any ideas anyone?

Try starting up the installer again, and tell it to run a 'upgrade' on your current installation, it won't replace anything but a few things on the first disk, and any damaged components hopefully. Then you can reconfigure your system w/o needing to first boot up into X.

I tried that - the freeze is happening a few lines into the boot process, way before it gets anywhere near X!

I've managed to do a few more tests - I can now get 10.2 running with the old kernel (and some minor issues in X), but no matter what I do with the new kernel, it halts after the APM line.

When you go into upgrade mode, see if you can disable APM. I'll see if there is a kernel parameter you can pass that disables it w/o the install, then you can update your bootloaders config file when you boot so that it automatically starts with this param.
edit: From http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/ov511/faq.html
If you enable ACPI(Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) in your system BIOS then the kernel should automatically disable APM on startup. Because you cannot boot, even into failsafe mode in the new kernel you have to do this, then you can either keep it that way, or config your kernel and user 'software suspend' instead. The newer kernels don't seem to like APM for power managment, so that's all the help I can give you.